


things you can't outrun

by dad_band



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dark Past, F/M, Falling In Love, Flashbacks, Season/Series 01, extra content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-07-19 01:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7339867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dad_band/pseuds/dad_band
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"being alive means running, and no matter how fast you are, there are some things you can't outrun- some things always manage to catch up to you..."</p><p> </p><p>Ten months ago, in the heart of Central City, the Particle Accelerator exploded. Ten months ago, there was no such thing as a meta-human nor the infamous 'red streak' people claim to see saving the world. More importantly, ten months ago, General Eiling had come nowhere close to success with the NOVA Project.</p><p>That all changed when Barry Allen was struck by lighting and Charlie Baker finally woke up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. things you can't outrun

_My name is Charlie Baker, and I am the most dangerous person alive. To the outside world, I'm just the girl who went missing back in high school, but in reality, I was taken by a group of military soldiers and forced to become the face of the NOVA Project._

_I underwent many tests and had my DNA engineered to the liking of a man named General Eiling, but no matter what they did, they could never quite get the results they wanted from me. Then the Particle Accelerator exploded and it awakened something inside of me. The NOVA Project was finally complete and I was transported to another secret military location to become the weapon of mass destruction I was destined to be._

_But I had had enough. A normal life wasn't an option for me anymore, but I knew that I couldn't sit by and let them turn me into some sort of killing machine. So I ran, leaving behind the NOVA Project and hoping to never see it again._

_I eventually ended up in Central City and quickly realized that I wasn't the only who was affected by the Particle Accelerator. At first, it didn't look like I could trust anyone, but one run in with the infamous 'red streak' was enough to show me I didn't have to fight any of this alone._

_The world is different now, but it's a world I have to live in, and to live, I need to run. This isn't the life I originally chose for myself, but one day, I will be free from General Eiling and his evil schemes. I will claim justice for myself and honor all those I've lost in the process._

_One day, I won't have to run from my past any longer._

* * *

 

_grant gustin as **barry allen**  _

_ _

_hayley williams as **charlie baker**_


	2. runaways

 

In the early morning hours, when the night was slow to retire and a light chill still hung in the air, a secret military base stood tall and at full alert, trying to put on a brave front and contain whatever problems it faced on the inside. Unfortunately for them, their 'problems' were something they weren't prepared to handle.

The base was losing power in each sector, almost as if each one going dark was some sort of twisted countdown. Soldiers were running around in a calm yet erratic fashion, trying to locate the source of the problem they knew was causing all of this and take it down before their beloved General came back to find this mess unaccounted for. The wailing sirens easily drowned out the many shouts bouncing off the walls of the corridors, making everyone much too distracted to notice the slightest bit of change amidst the members of their ranks.

And Charlie Baker was more than okay with that.

Having easily taken down one of the rookie soldiers that had arrived at the military base only a few days ago, she quickly stripped him of his uniform- quickly thanking whatever sort of force might be up in the sky that he was a rather small fellow similar to her own size -and changed into the stolen camoflauge outfit. If this plan of hers was going to work, she needed to blend in, and even with her bright orange hair, no thanks to the NOVA Project, all she had to do was tuck it all up in the hat and pray that she was able to get out of here unnoticed.

While the uniform did fit Charlie rather nicely, the hat was a little larger than she expected. However, that easily allowed her to tuck up her neon locks and pull the visor over her eyes. Once the black boots were laced over her feet and the rest of the outfit seemed to be in order, she quickly ducked out of the closet she had been taking refuge in and quickly fell in line with the other soldiers. 

Charlie knew how to leave the building, she had been memorizing the floor plans for years, but for her plan to properly work, she had to be as close as she could get to the front door before this sector lost all power. She needed the black out to work to her advantage, and lucky for her, she was the one who had been causing all of them. All she needed to do now was-

"You there! Soldier!" a loud booming called out, startling Charlie out of her own thoughts and causing her to fall away from the rest of the group. Muttering a couple of choice words under her breath, she slowed to a stop and turned around to face the burly officer addressing her, keeping her head low as he approached. The man looked her up and down, seemingly unaware of who she was as he began to speak.

"Why were you falling behind, solider?" he sneered, trying to get Charlie to look him in the eyes. "Are you aware of the problem at hand-"

"I'm aware, sir," Charlie ground out through her teeth, refusing to meet the burly man's gaze. "I just got distracted, that's all."

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed between them, and Charlie knew then and there that her luck had just started to run out. Just when she thought she was safe, she was caught, and when the commanding officer opened his mouth to speak, she knew her dwindling luck was only going to get worse. "Soldier, I'm going to ask that you come with me," the man commanded, roughly grabbing Charlie by the arm and trying to drag her along to his desired located.

Charlie was not having any part of that. Her body immediately went into 'fight or flight' mode as she grabbed the larger man by the arm and gave it a harsh yank, twisting it enough to where it loosened his hold on her long enough for her to slip out of his grasp. An extra kick to the shin was granted for good measure before Charlie took off, sprinting through the halls and pushing through other soldiers without a care in the world. The loud protests of pain soon became shouted commands, ordering anyone who could hear to grab the neon-haired girl. This only got Charlie to run faster and to push through even more people.

She was so close to the exit, so close to freedom, that she could almost taste it. Only a few more steps was all it took, and as she roughly elbowed a soldier who tried to grab her, her sweaty palms slammed down onto the power box connecting to the front door. That was all it took for the next blackout to occur, and before anyone could so much as blink, an explosion spread throughout the building. Shrapnel flew, screams of agony rang throughout the air, and the only thing left in the firey wreckage was a lone figure retreating toward the woods and leaving all the madness behind her.

After years and years of torture, Charlie was finally free. She couldn't even bring herself to care about the destruction she had just caused; everyone there had taken away everything she ever cared about. They could all rot in hell for all she cared. Charlie just hoped that hell wasn't what was awaiting her as she ran for the first place she could think of: 

Home.

 

  **⚡** _ **three months later**_ **⚡**

 

Apparently, being free of the people who turned you into a monster wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Charlie quickly found out that having her new found freedom meant that she had to constantly be on the run, never staying in one place too long for fear of being spotted and reported to the nearest military base (thanks General Eiling for those wonderful WANTED posters by the way). She also quickly realized how out of touch she was with the everything. Nothing felt or looked the same to her anymore, and dear god, the music on the radio had gotten even  _worse_  than what it used to be. Then again, Charlie had to admit that being cut off from the outside world for almost 10 years didn't help her keep in touch with anything that could be considered "cool". Did people still use Myspace? Was it still cool to layer your tank tops? Did blink-182 ever get back together? Was being emo and majorly in love with My Chemical Romance still a thing? The questions were endless for Charlie, and she had to admit, jumping from late 2005 to late 2014 wasn't all that easy.

The only thing that ended up being remotely easy for Charlie was moving on. She quickly realized that going back to the place she was born or to the one person she still cared about in this world wasn't an option, and while the relevation stung like a harsh slap to the face, she quickly got over that and continued to wander around the Northern part of the US. The one thing Charlie was able to recover from her old life was a bank account she had made not long before she had been abducted. Back when the bank didn't care about checking who you actually were when you created an account with them, Charlie made one under a fake name so her dad would stop "borrowing" money from her. She was currently incredibly thankful that her teenage self did this, because without it, Charlie would be both pennyless and in danger of being discovered by General Eiling if she ever did decide to create a bank account under her real name. 

With all of that aside, Charlie soon realized she could not live the rest of her life off of $ _231.45_. She also quickly found out that even a few "under the table jobs" here and there weren't going to cut it either, so using whatever computer skills she retained from the NOVA Project or her AOL chat room days, she began to hack into people's bank accounts and steal money from them.

In Charlie's defense, she acted as a Robin Hood of sorts, only stealing from the rich to give to the poor. The 'poor' just so happened to be Charlie, and she only stole a few thousand dollars here and there from people like Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen who probably wouldn't even notice it was gone (although she quickly found out that Mr. Queen was loosing all his money due to the downfall of his business, so she put back the money into his account and looked elsewhere). It was only from pretenious douche-nozzles like Lex Luthor and Donald Trump that she took a small loan of a million dollars from, because really, no one liked those guys and she figured they especially wouldn't miss that money anyways. At the end of the day, Charlie Baker was loaded- probably close to being a millionaire, if not a billionaire -and more than set for the rest of her life. The longer she stayed out of Eiling's sight, the less the military looked for her. In fact, in her mind, it was basically safe to say that they had given up on trying to track her down, so with that in mind, Charlie decided it was safe to finally settle down and get her life back together.

Central City was always known for being the quiet, calm city where nothing ever happened and things stayed normal no matter what. To Charlie, it sounded like the perfect city to crash in, and when she arrived, she found that it was just as she had always known it to be: perfectly normal. She had never heard about the Particle Accelerator explosion, so she had no idea about the metahumans who were just like her wandering about the area. In fact, she wouldn't find out about them until 30 minutes after her arrival, and it was in the most cliché place you could think of:

The Bank.

It all started out by going to the nearest bank to withdraw a rather large sum of money from her account- Charlie didn't trust debit cards, and she also figured that once she found the perfect apartment place, she might as well just pay up front with cash and be done with it -and the bank was teeming with life the moment she walked it. Several odd glances were thrown her way, most likely at the bright orange hair peeking out from beneath her jacket hood, but she ignored them all and made her way up to the next available teller. Charlie offered up a polite smile to the teller once she was beckoned forward, and within minutes, she was giving the lady the desired dollar amount, her fake ID, and was officially one step closer to carrying around a shit load of cash in her back pocket.

Of course, with Charlie's god-awful luck, things didn't go according to plan. Before the kind teller, who Charlie found out was named Nicole, was able to excuse herself to the back to go gather up all the money Charlie requested, the familiar sound of bullets being shot into the air got everyone's attention and caused them all to panic. 

"This is a robbery!" a gruff voice shouted, more bullets being sprayed in the building. "Get down on the ground and get out of our way!"

Although panicked, the majority of the people in the bank did what the robber wanted and slowly sank to the ground, all fearing for their lives as they had no clue how this was going to turn out for any of them. Tellers began to hover near their cash boxes, prepared to work with any demands the gunmen had so there was little to no damage to anyone inside. The only person who was keeping a level head, and to be quite frank, was rather annoyed at the entire ordeal, was Charlie. She, unlike everyone else, did not jump at the sound of the first bullet and sure as hell didn't sink to the floor once the head gunman shouted out the order. No, Charlie just sat there, rolled her eyes hard enough to cause a slight headache, and muttered something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like "cheese and rice".

The masked gunmen saw that everyone but the shorter girl dressed in jeans and a hooded leather jacket were following their orders, and just like every other criminal in the universe, they got extremely pissed off at the fact that she was just standing there. Who did she think she was? And how dare she just stand there motionless while bullets were being shot all around her? Thinking the girl was just dumb, the leader of the gunmen took a few steps forward and cocked his gun to get her attention. "I said get down on the _fucking ground_ -"

"Yeah yeah, I heard you the first time," Charlie snapped, her hands twitching at her sides. "As you can see, I'm just choosing to ignore you."

The gunman actually stopped, and if you could see behind his mask, you could see his eyes widening in shock. Never in his life as a criminal had he met someone so fearless, and it was both impressive and incredibly annoying. Either way, he still had his gun pointed directly at the back of the girl's hooded head, ready to shoot in the case she made one wrong move. 

"Look lady," he barked, "I don't know who in the hell you think you are, but usually when there's a robbery in progress, it's wise to follow the orders of the guy holding a gun to your head."

Charlie snorted in amusement. "Technically, you're a few feet behind me and that gun is nowhere near my head," she sassed. "Also, if you're trying to scare me right now, you're going to have to try better than that."

At this point, everyone was terribly confused as to what was going on. No one had ever seen someone stand up to a bunch of criminals like this before, and there were bank tellers and customers alike who were quietly hissing at the small girl in front of them to get the hell down on the ground. Charlie heard them, but as she already established, she really didn't give a shit about this whole situation. It was an annoying incovienence for her, and all she wanted to do was to get her money and go. Unfortunately, even with some of the gunmen lowering their weapons slightly in shock, no one was going to be backing down anytime soon, so with an incredibly loud, exasperated sigh, Charlie took a step behind her and began to turn around to face the gunmen. Several weapons snapped up to attention and were cocked, close to pulling the trigger as Charlie put up her hands in surrender, looking the head gunman dead in the eye as she spook. "Look, we're all here to get some money, whether it be through legal means or not, but how about you guys just put your guns down, let everyone in here go, and you guys can go open up a bank account and earn money just like everyone else in here does so we can all go our seperate ways, yeah?" No one said anything in reply, which just coaxed another sigh out of the small girl in front of them. "Fine, I guess we're going to have to do this hard way. How would you guys prefer I kick your asses? With my bare hands or with my beautiful boots down here? Personally, I'd go for the boots, because I've always wanted to hear what it's like to be kicked in the balls with combat boots-"

"You talk too much," the leader snapped, giving a small wave of his hand that signalled every gunman in the room to release a round of bullets all fired at the sole person left standing. People started screaming, and some people even turned away to avoid the enivitable: watching some poor girl crumple to the ground in a messy, bloody heap. 

Except the bullets never hit their desired target.

In the blink of an eye, Charlie's palm was raised out in front of her and began to envelop in a soft yellow glow. The bullets all slowed to a stop in front of her, and her palm glowed bright for a fraction of a second before the glow vanished all together, the sound of bullets falling to the floor filling the room. For a moment, no one knew what to do or say. Nobody moved and everyone just stared at the strange girl with wide, fearful eyes. The same thought crossed everyone's mind a second later, and soon after, all hell broke loose. Frantic whispers began to float across the room, words like _metahuman_  and _particle acclerator_ reaching peoples ears faster than anything else. Someone else let out a horrified scream that spooked a gunman out of his trance and caused him to fire another round of bullets. Charlie rolled out of the way this time instead of stopping the bullets and began to charge the gunmen out of pure instinct. Her body went into another familiar 'fight or flight episode, and for a moment, Charlie felt like she was right back at the military base working on another training exercise instead of fighting for her life to not only save these people but stop the criminals from stealing the money from the bank she was currently a member at.

It was funny that the only difference between the excercise and this was that this was in a real, public place, not a controlled test site. Either way, fighting for her life and dodging bullets came as easy as breathing to Charlie, and she fleetingly wondered when she accepted how fucked up her life really was.

The first gunmen went down rather easily as Charlie tackled him, falling both from the shock of what just happened and the brute force of Charlie's hit. She rolled over the fallen body, throwing a good swift kick to the head before bouncing up to the balls of her feet and whipping around to attack the next criminal. Only, there wasn't much to attack the moment she turned around. A harsh gust of wind rushed past her, the force of it knocking off the hood from her jacket, and in a muddied blur of red, each gunman was knocked down to the ground with their guns flying across the room. Bank tellers and customers began to be rushed out of the room as well, disappearing in a blink of an eye, and if she weren't so shocked, Charlie might have started yelling a rather loud, three word expletive starting with _what_  and ending in _fuck_. And if she wasn't so focused on trying to figure out what was going on, Charlie also might have noticed the two very key things happening all around her: the sounds of blaring police sirens in the distance and the sight of a nearby gunman pull out a spare gun from his pocket and fire it off towards her chest.

Charlie felt her body stumble back before she heard the gun fire off. At first, she thought she'd been shot, but then she realized that she didn't feel any excrutiating pain or smell the familiar coppery scent of blood anywhere. The only thing she saw was a man in a red suit- which she admittedly thought was spandex at first -punch the criminal square in the jaw and drop the bullet from his fist the moment the gunman's head hit the marble floor. To say Charlie was shocked would be an understatement. She had seen some weird stuff in her day, but this guy literally appeared out of _nowhere_. It was enough to spook her into a momentary lapse of paralysis, and when the man in red turned around to face her with a blurry face, it was good enough for her to start running.

"Are you-" the man in red could barely get those words out before Charlie shoved past him, booking it to the nearest entrance as fast as her little legs would carry her. Of course, if she had been thinking properly, she would have known it was stupid to run away from a guy who just showed up in a blink of an eye, and before she could get very far, the red blur ran in front of her and stopped her in her tracks.

"Hey! Who are you?" the man questioned, trying to reach out to touch her, but Charlie jumped back, already having enough of this situation. The adrenaline was pumping violently through her veins, and she fleetingly wondered when that familar buzz of energy would start burning along her fingertips.

"Stay away from me!" Charlie snarled, her already-bright orange hair growing in intensity while energy crackled within her irises. The man in red was stubborn, though, and reached out for her again while trying to speak. Instinctively, Charlie grabbed his arm and twisted it, earning a loud cry of pain as she twirled him around to where his arm was pressed against the middle of his back. She kept it there a brief moment before letting him go and roughly shoving the man forward. The man stumbled towards the ground, giving Charlie enough of a distraction to bolt from the scene yet again, this time actually being able to make it out the door and onto the streets of Central City.

Several people gave her strange looks as she ran past, some of them more offended than others seeing as how she had to push through people sometimes just to keep moving, but Charlie didn't care. This was _not_  how she planned her life in Central City was going to turn out, and she surely didn't expect having to run away from some sort of strange guy with powers just to keep herself safe-

Holy _shit_.

The thoughts hit her like a ton of bricks. It was more than a wake-up call for Charlie, and she wasn't exactly sure what to make of it all. In fact, the gravity of the situation was enough to take her breath away and for her body to slow to a stop in the middle of an empty sidewalk. Charlie finally realized that she wasn't the only one anymore, that she was no long alone in the universe. The question was, how many more people like her were out there? 

Charlie needed answers, and she decided that the next time she ran into this...this _speedster_ , that she was to going to ask him about everything.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I haven't updated in a long, long time, but I'm back! Well, sort of at least. I'm going to try my best to update as regularly as possible, so here's to hoping for that! Also, I know that I haven't really explained what type of powers/abilities that Charlie has, but that's intentional. You get to learn more about her/what she can do as the story progresses, so keep your eyes out for that. 
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading everyone and I hope to see you readers soon!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So I've been a reader on this site for awhile now, but I finally decided to sign up and start posting stories as well. This is a story of mine that I'm writing on another site as well, but knowing the group on here, I thought it'd be cool to present it here as well (plus, I'm really curious to see what it's like to write with this format).
> 
> Anyways, before I begin, I'd just like to say that I do not own DC Comics, the CW network, The Flash, or any of the other characters in this story other than Charlie Baker and any other OC's I happen to make up along the way; the same goes for the plot and dialogue (the majority of which I don't own).
> 
> That should be it for all my introductions and whatnot. Read on, and I hope you all enjoy this story just as much as I will enjoy writing it!


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